Monday, February 11, 2013

In the days leading up to Valentine's Day, there tend to be lots of events and lively public discussion about marriage. For example, today is National Marriage Day, and there is a growing international movement to make the week surrounding February 14 International Marriage Week, a week to celebrate marriage and promote its health and survival. In fact, last year several Congressmen in the House of Representatives spent 45 minutes reinforcing the benefits of marriage and the need for a National Marriage week. During that time, they said things like the following:

"...It should always be our goal to keep that family unit together, and to hold that bedrock of our society together...And this is something that we can build on that will benefit our society." ~Rep. Gregg Harper

and this

"National leaders should be encouraging stable family formation, not redefining marriage. I call upon Congress to recognize the intrinsic good that results to all of
society when husbands and wives strive to uphold their marriage vows and raise children in loving and stable homes." ~Rep. Doug Lamborn

So Congress, for over five and a half years, my husband and I have been striving to uphold the marriage vows we declared in English and Spanish before God, our parents, siblings, and other dear family members and friends in Illinois. Sometimes this meant staying true to each other and supporting each other across borders. Sometimes it has meant leaning on each other as we attempt to bring up a family in a totally foreign culture. It meant living some of our most precious family moments through Skype, including our son's birth, birthdays, Father's Days. For these five and a half years, it has meant constantly weighing our individual needs against the long-term survival of our family unit, and choosing to sacrifice accordingly. We've done all we can to keep our family intact. And it has been painful and difficult, all because of the challenge of having one member of our family legally forbidden from entering my country for the rest of our lives. So Reps. Harper and Lamborn, we could really use voices like yours, who are so passionate about the benefits of marriage, to also defend our marriage when it comes to laws passed in your halls.

Family time, the legal way, 2008

"And let me just say, as a government as well, marriage is a big deal to us because there's a direct correlation: The weaker our families are, the more government has to stand up and provide services. The stronger our families are, the less there is a need for government. You'll see it in law enforcement. You'll see it in social services. You'll see it in food stamps. On and on and on, the stronger our families are, the less government we need. And as our families collapse, we have an acceleration of government to try to fill in the gaps. It is this uniting aspect of our culture--white, black, Latino, Asian, American Indian, every race, faith. Family is the key, and marriage is the essence of that." ~ Rep. James Lankford

Rep. Lankford and his colleagues go on to detail the statistics relating to children who grow up in a home with a stable, healthy marriage: ranging from lower drug use, crime, and teen pregnancy rates to higher indexes of emotional, psychological, and even educational stability. They echo the sentiment that stronger families have less need for government intervention or support in their lives. In my experience interacting with other US citizens affected by legal obstacles to their spouse's presence in the US, this is absolutely the truth. Families that were economically stable, making steady payments on their mortgages, seeing their kids thrive in school and church, participating in their communities? They gradually find themselves relying on the government for support when the primary breadwinner is forced to leave or chooses to leave in an attempt to "do the right thing". Kids that were confident and stable suddenly begin to act out, perform poorly in school, require special services to stay afloat.

Immigration policy is seeing some remarkable changes right now, and many of those seek to make it easier on families affected by immigration, especially where children are involved. Even so, many of these changes overlook families like mine, in which the non-US spouse has already left the US. They especially overlook those who fall in those often-overlooked cracks in the law; the laws that impose lengthy bans and no chance to plead out for people who have committed immigration infractions that don't even register on the criminal spectrum of law, sometimes when they were too young to even have a say in such a thing, as is the case for my husband. Our families suffer, our marriages experience excessive strain, our children suffer the effects of an absent parent in many cases.

In my last post, I said I would be breaking down the stirrings in the immigration world that have changed the game and made the news in recent months, and here's where I'll talk about all of that. The following is about to get all immigration law-heavy as I explain what's been going on with those changes, so feel free to skip if this stuff makes your head spin!

Lockbox Filing - Last spring brought a new streamlined and centralized process for filing waivers (for those eligible to do so), which also opened the door for us to perhaps appeal our case, as it removes the US consulates/embassies from the equation and allows families with obscure legal obstacles like ours to make our appeals directly within the US.

DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) - The summer brought a policy change that offered people like Carlos who were brought to the US as children the opportunity to stay, attend school, and work in a temporary situation free from the threat of deportation. Unfortunately, the policy cut off the age limit just a few months from Carlos' birthdate, so he couldn't have benefited even if we had remained in the US, and of course, by leaving the US, he removed himself from the possibility of ever being able to take advantage of a policy like that.

Provisional Waiver - During the fall came the development of this groundbreaking policy which will impact thousands of families in the US when it kicks in next month, by allowing them to have their immigration violation bans waived before they even leave the US to interview for their visas, rather than the old program which caused US citizen families to have to choose international separation or temporary relocation of the whole family outside the US for an indefinite amount of time while waiting for their inadmissible immigrant spouse to be approved for their visa. Once again, we can't benefit from such a program since we're already outside the US, and it doesn't remove the issue of the alleged false claim of citizenship that stands in our way of any progress with immigration or waivers.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform - Finally, this winter there is a lot of excitement over potential immigration reform in Congress, after over ten years of virtual impasse on that front. Right now there are lots of proposals and plans; some from the House, some from the Senate, and President Obama has also declared his own ideas. Of course, before we see actual reform, the Senate and House will need to come to a common understanding, and most likely it will need to incorporate the central tenets of the President's plan. Needless to say, that's a lot of work and a lot of cooperation for a Congress that so far has struggled pretty mightily to agree on anything, let alone something of this importance and magnitude. So even passing any kind of meaningful reform is a long battle, and nobody can say right now whether such reform will include families like ours. Some reports indicate that an old legislative proposal from 2010 might be re-entered into the conversation, and if so, that particular bill DOES help families like ours. Right now, the conversation seems to center on the big and dramatic talking points like border enforcement, visas for those in STEM careers, temporary worker visas for the agriculture industry, penalties and the question of citizenship for those currently present unlawfully in the US. Outliers in the law like our situation are unlikely to factor heavily in these debates, and the legislators debating these issues often have very little understanding of the intricacies that exist on that front. That's why we need people advocating for families like ours to be included.

So this week, as so many celebrate love, or make frustrated declarations related to the lack thereof in their lives, I am immensely grateful that I have not only been blessed with a lifelong partner, but that I also have the ability, at the moment, to live in the same country with him. Still, our children's long-term livelihood and our own economic stability are in peril as long as laws remain on the books that force me to choose between my country and the man I promised to spend my life with. A government that values marriage should not be permitting laws that leave responsible, caring, morally upstanding people in separate countries from their US citizen spouses and children with no way to work towards returning to them.

We are among these US citizen-immigrant families, sticking it out despite the legal obstacles

And although I have wearied of the battle, the advocacy, the petitioning, the writing, calling, faxing, lobbying, I'm thankfully in league with some wonderful people who have the fire to renew the push for families like ours. They've written a petition and are gathering support for the cause to make it more possible for families like ours to overcome the long-term immigration bans that are preventing us from thriving together in the US. So please, check out this petition and if you agree, sign it. And then, feel free to ask your elected officials to support marriage, all marriages, including ours!

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I don't think they should have a law that separates families. You are right about the impact on our kids and the financial burden. Two of my four kids have been diagnosed with depression, and my daughter has already attempted suicide once and she is only 13.

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us

Married since May 2007, parents since December 2008, we held our little family together across the US-Mexican border for over three years. After facing the reality that living together in the US wouldn't be possible, we moved on to adventures together in South Korea for a few years, and now have returned to our passport countries to push once and for all to bring Carlos home.

Here, I blog about our adventures in parenting, travel, multilingualism, maintaining multiple cultures while living abroad, immigration, policy, and keeping it all together while we confront this process.